BOOKENDS - Bleak Humour

BOOKENDS - Bleak Humour

Article excerpt

Harry Enfield has said that 'comedy without Galton and Simpson would be like literature without Dickens, ' and he may be right. Their two most lasting creations, Hancock's Half Hour (illustrated above) and Step toe & Son, influenced almost everything of worth that came after, from Fawlty Towers and Porridge to The Office and Gavin and Stacey. Nonetheless, you can't imagine any show as bleak as Steptoe being commissioned today:

two men sitting in a room arguing, forever. For this reason, and maybe others, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson haven't received their due.

The comedy archivist Christopher Stevens corrects this with The Masters of Sitcom (Michael O'Mara Books, £20), a lovingly compiled and annotated selection of some of their best scripts. …